


Autumn

by tryceratops



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Darcy Lewis-centric, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryceratops/pseuds/tryceratops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five reasons Darcy hated fall and one reason it wasn't so bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn

1

The first time Darcy broke a bone it was October of second grade. She had been practicing jumping off the swings after school, because at recess one of the boys had told her a girl could never be as good at it as a boy. Seven year old Darcy, thinking that was a bunch of bullshit, stayed after school instead of walking home like she was supposed to in order to practice, practice, practice, so that the next day she could do the coolest jump and prove the boys all wrong.

She got on the swing after her last successful jump and decided to practice once more, just to be sure she had it down. She pumped and pumped and pumped as hard as her short legs could go until she was swinging as high as she could go. She swung back, and as she was moving forward, she leapt off the swing, flying through the air. Something was off about this jump, though, and instead of remaining vertical like she had on previous jumps, she started to tilt forward. She watched as the ground came closer and closer to her face, and she had no choice but to put her hands out to break her fall.

As she landed she heard a sickening crack and a pain shot up through her right arm. She cried out, first in shock at her abrupt landing and then, once she had time to process it, she cried out again in pain. She started crying and one of the mothers who was nearby ran over to see what was wrong.

It was pretty clear to anyone who looked: Darcy’s wrist was turned at a very awkward angle, definitely nothing normal.

“Oh dear.” The mother said, “That’s not good.” A teacher came over to join her, having heard Darcy’s cries. Between the two of them, they managed to find her mother’s contact information. Before she knew it, Darcy, still crying, was in her mother’s car and on the way to the hospital.

When she told her mother what she’d been doing to break her wrist, she got scolded. And the next day at school, she couldn’t get on the swings. Not because her mother had forbidden it (that wouldn’t have mattered to her), but because her cast prevented her from holding the chain on the swing properly, making it so she couldn’t actually swing, nevermind show off her jumps to the boys.

And so the swings remained the domain of the boys on the playground for the rest of the fall, until the snow fell and everyone stopped playing on the playground. And Darcy never got to show them what was what, and to make matters worse, the boys made fun of her cast.

* * *

 

2

It was September of fifth grade, just after school started, when Darcy’s dad got arrested. It turned out that instead of going to work at the office from 8:30-5 every day like Darcy and her mom thought he was, he was actually sitting at a bar. The money he made actually came from a pyramid scheme he was running. And from scam insurance he was selling. And possibly from drug trafficking, though those charges were dropped and he never admitted to it. He’d also racked up a considerable amount of debt, and hidden it well. In just a few hours, Darcy’s life was turned upside down. Her father was taken away from her, and money troubles became the name of the game in the Lewis household.

They’d led a very comfortable life up to that point, living in a large, suburban, four bedroom house with a hot tub and a sauna, and two cars (with a promise of each child getting his or her own for her sixteenth birthday). Up until she was ten years old, college had been a sure thing for her and her two brothers, whether or not they would get scholarships, her parents had been able to put away money for their education. Suddenly, their house, their cars, and their savings were taken away from them, just like that. Her mom, who had stayed at home since her first child was born had to go back to work, and they had to move to a small two bedroom apartment in a sketchier neighbourhood of town. Darcy shared a room with her mom, and her two brothers shared the other room. The oldest one, Logan, got a job as well, working as an assistant to a mechanic just down the street from their new apartment. He was only sixteen and had wanted to be a lawyer, but every day that passed he talked more and more about dropping out of school so he could work more.

Up until she was ten, Darcy had lived the American dream, but it was all a scam. She had to switch schools, both because she moved to a new school district and also because none of the kids at school would talk to her, except to make fun of her. For being poor and for having a dad in prison. Her friends weren’t allowed to come around to play with her anymore.

She had to watch as her favourite toys were taken away by men who were mad, who said that her dad hadn’t actually paid for them. She watched as her mom pretended not to care, but listened as she cried every night. She saw how her mom flinched every time the phone rang, knowing it was debt collectors calling to remind them that the phone, electricity, heat, gas, water, credit card bill was overdue.

She watched how her mom got dressed up in her fast food uniform for the first time, just a few weeks after her dad’s arrest. She saw how ashamed her mom was of it before going out to work for the first time (taking the bus, since their car had been repossessed by then). And she watched as her mom cried when she came home from her first eight hour shift, smelling of grease. She listened as her mom told her how awful people were to her.

Darcy’s mom had once been the woman who was rude to fast food workers (on the few occasions they had deigned to eat there), and now here she was on the receiving end of that treatment. Darcy saw how it hurt her mom to have fallen so far so quickly. To be the woman with the husband in prison. To be mingling with all the people that just weeks before she thought she was too good to even look at.

Darcy swore to herself, as she watched her mom struggle to go work her eight, ten, twelve hour shifts that she would never forgive her father, and that she would never be mean to a service worker again.

That was the year that Darcy decided once and for all that fall was her least favourite season.

* * *

 

3

The next fall, Darcy’s parents got their divorce. It wasn’t as big a deal as it could have been, since Darcy hadn’t seen her father since the last day of his trial. Her mother refused to take her to the prison to visit him, and he never asked. Darcy never asked to go either. She was still so mad at him. Every time a bill came in the mail, she got mad all over again. Every time her mom came home from work fighting off tears, she got mad all over again. Every time she had to ask for new school supplies and watch her mom try not to do the math in her head to figure out where the extra ten dollars would come from, she got mad all over again. She’d had a perfect life and her father, in her mind, had stolen it from her. Everything was his fault.

So when her mom sat her down and told her that she didn’t want to be married to him anymore, Darcy didn’t feel much. She knew she was supposed to be sad; that’s how kids feel when their parents get divorced: sad. But she didn’t feel anything. That wasn’t what made the fall of that year suck.

That fall, Logan didn’t go back to school. Instead, at seventeen, he started working with the mechanic full-time, getting on the job training. Every evening after work he would talk about how mechanics made good money, that he could lead a good life if he could make it through trade school (and his boss was already talking about helping him pay for that). But Darcy could see in his eyes how much it hurt him to not finish high school, how much he hated giving up his dream of being a lawyer.

Their other brother, Sam, was fourteen and already talking about getting a job. He wasn’t old enough to do more than a paper route, but Logan refused to let him. Darcy understood right away, but Sam had to have it spelled out for him. Logan was sacrificing his education so that his two younger siblings wouldn’t have to. And he made both Sam and Darcy promise that they would graduate high school no matter what.

That night, alone in her room (her mother working the night shift again), Darcy cried herself to sleep. She was so angry with her father, and so sad for Logan. He was giving up everything for them, and she promised herself she wouldn’t disappoint him.

* * *

 

4

Fall was when the little strip turned pink. It was October thirteenth, and Darcy’s world turned upside down. She was sixteen, a junior in high school, so close to graduating, but one stupid mistake at one stupid party and suddenly she was pregnant.

She threw the test out in the garbage at the McDonald’s where she’d taken the test, and went home, trying her best not to panic. Sam, having graduated the previous year (a year late—he’d failed some classes, but kept his promise to Logan and graduated) was now working as a bus boy at a local restaurant, the plan being for him to save up money for college, but everyone in the family knew his chances of getting in were slim at best.

So when she got home, having skipped last period (hah)to take the test without any of her classmates seeing her, she had the place to herself. She locked herself in her room and screamed into her pillow, breaking down into tears. How could she have been so stupid? Why the hell hadn’t she made him wear a condom? What the fuck was she going to do now?

She sat down and very carefully weighed out her options. She couldn’t keep the baby, that much was clear. They couldn’t afford a baby. She couldn’t afford a baby. She couldn’t graduate high school with a baby. She couldn’t be _that girl_.

So that left her with two choices. Scrounge up the money for an abortion, or give it up for adoption and hope to find some adoptive parents who would pay her medical bills.

Both required money, resources. Things she didn’t have. Her brothers insisted she shouldn’t have to work, that she should focus on school. And now she’d done this. How much would an abortion cost? A few hundred at least. Where the hell would she get that money?

Where the hell would she get money for pre-natal care though? If she could find adoptive parents early on, she could get them to pay for everything. Hopefully. And, doing the math in her head, she realized that she would give birth over the summer break, which meant she wouldn’t actually have to miss any school for it.

She screamed into her pillow once more and then sat up. If she could find adoptive parents who would pay for everything, she’d keep it. Otherwise she’d hit up mister “sorry-babe-condoms-are-too-small-for-me” for however much an abortion cost. And he’d pay or she’d kick his ass.

Mind made up, she then set about googling for information on how to find adoptive parents, and found an organization that claimed to provide assistance for private adoptions. Pretty sure that was what she wanted, she printed out their address and shoved it in her backpack. She’d skip school soon to go down and see them about it.

And then she’d just have to figure out how to tell her family…

* * *

 

5

The baby was born in late June, happy and healthy, and she had all of five minutes with her before she was taken to her new family. It broke Darcy’s heart a bit to see her go, but she’d set her mind on it and that was what was happening.

Everything in her life went back to normal after the baby—Sarah, she called her in her head—was born. Darcy got a part-time job waiting tables to help make money over the summer, her mom got promoted to manager of the fast food restaurant she was working at (more hours, but better pay), and everything was looking just fine.

And it was, until late September, when, for the first time since her father’s arrest, the police showed up at her doorstep.

To inform her that there had been an accident. Logan had been out driving three friends home after a night of drinking (he had been sober, the police assured her, both the bartender and his blood tests proved that), when he was hit by a drunk driver and killed instantly. His three friends were in critical condition at the hospital. One of them would die three days later. Another had a leg amputated, and the third walked away with just some minor scarring.

But that was later. All Darcy heard in that moment was that Logan was dead, and she collapsed on the floor, breaking down into tears. Her mom, home because she was on night shifts again, came running out of the bedroom when she heard the thud of Darcy’s body hitting the ground.

Darcy was only vaguely aware of her mother’s reaction to hearing the news from the cops. She was stuck in her own head, trying to process the notion of her brother being dead.

And then she was in work mode.

They had to call Sam, go to the hospital, identify the body. Because it had to be a mistake. That was the only possibility. It was a mistake.

But it wasn’t a mistake. They went and they identified the body and they made the arrangements and they had the funeral.

And none of it seemed real.

* * *

 

+1

After that year, fall wasn’t so bad. She started university in fall, having gotten a full scholarship based on her grades. She met Jane in fall three years after that, had her life changed by Thor. But she still hated fall. It reminded her of everything wrong in her life.

And then she got to know Sif.

It was about three years after she’d first met Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three, that they’d all begun spending more time on Earth. After London, with Thor staying permanently, they had reason to come visit.

It had started off as nothing major. Darcy was convinced that someone like Sif could never love someone like her (talk about out of your league) but she dreamed. She’d slept with and dated both guys and girls in college, though she found as she grew older her preferences went more and more towards women.

And so when she saw Sif for the first time after London—after Ian—she fell. Hard.

And she figured it was harmless flirtation. She’d hold eye contact with Sif longer than with the others, she would brush against her, laugh at her jokes even if they weren’t funny (or more often, when she didn’t get them). And she never expected, never _dreamed_ that anything would come of it.

Jane caught on pretty fast, and she would find excuses to leave Darcy and Sif alone together. Darcy wasn’t sure if Thor caught on on his own or if Jane explained it to him, but either way he began encouraging Sif and Darcy to spend time together. He would come up with various “Midgardian delights” that Sif just had to see, and encourage Darcy to show her. Somehow the Warriors Three disappeared whenever this happened, and Darcy suspected they were in on it too.

And even though so many people were encouraging it, Darcy still assumed it was just for fun, that nothing would come of it.

Until one October evening they were out walking through a park and Sif’s hand brushed hers. Once, twice, and then her fingers slipped into Darcy’s hand. Darcy, surprised, glanced over at her, only to find Sif’s face just a few scant inches from her own.

“…Sif?”

“My lady, have you been courting me?”

“C-courting? I, uh…” She had no idea how to respond. When in doubt, blunt honesty seemed like a good policy though. “I’m, um into you… if that’s what you mean?”

“’into’ me, is that how you say it.”

“I.. guess yeah.”

“What would you say if I said I was “into you” as well?”

Darcy stared at her. “Seriously?”

Sif simply leaned down to kiss her.

And that was when Darcy decided that maybe fall didn’t have to be all bad.

 


End file.
